Playlist: Lives for Sale: Human Trafficking
Each year, more than one million people try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, contending with dangerous forces that prey on their hopes and exploit their gullibility. This program exposes the most painful, disturbing, and hidden dimension of illegal immigration: the growing black market trade in human beings. Shedding light on the poverty that causes so many to risk everything by leaving their home countries, the film reconstructs the frightening journeys of sex-slavery victims and highlights the work of CAST—the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking. Border patrol agents and other members of law enforcement share their knowledge and experience regarding this ongoing human rights crisis. (60 minutes)
Two women from Honduras explain their motivation for trying to travel to the United States to find work. Common dangers of their journey include falling from trains and being raped.
Desperate women sell their bodies at night clubs and brothels along the routes they take to seek work in the United States. At one Mexican border town migrants are counseled regarding the dangers of crossing the desert.
Christian activists in Arizona work to remember migrants who have died crossing the desert to reach the United States. They leave markers and water along desert routes traveled by migrants.
A former guide who led migrants across the desert into the United States for 20 years now works to warn them of the dangers. Regardless of his warnings, the migrants--including mothers with young children--plan to cross at nightfall.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona searches for migrants attempting to cross the desert. Increased border patrol security has increased the demand for guides called coyotes who lead migrants across the desert into the United States.
As many as 20,000 migrants who cross illegally into the United States each year become victims of human trafficking. An impoverished woman who left her village to seek work in the U.S. describes how she fell victim to traffickers.
The U.S. State Department estimates 80 percent of trafficking victims are women and girls, the majority of whom are trafficked for sexual exploitation. A woman deceived by traffickers describes arriving in the United States.
Women and girls deceived by traffickers are sold to brothels in the United States. A woman who thought she was entering the United States to work in a factory describes the experience of being sold as a sex slave in a Los Angeles brothel.
A girl describes being sold by her family to a man and then being transported to Florida. She describes the imprisonment, forced labor, beatings, and sexual slavery she suffered there.
A young girl from Guatemala describes the imprisonment, forced labor, beatings, and sexual slavery she suffered after being trafficked to Florida. Her situation was discovered by a neighbor who took the pregnant girl to a hospital.
A young girl from Guatemala describes the imprisonment, forced labor, beatings, and sexual slavery she suffered in Florida. Local detectives describe their surprise at finding human trafficking in a middle class neighborhood.
A concerned neighbor reported the brothel where Lucita was enslaved to police. While they were held as witnesses in the case, activists from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) provided support for the victims.
Poverty and even trade policies are root causes of migration and human trafficking. Traffickers prey on people in desperate situations to profit from a demand for cheap labor and commercial sex.
Desperate poverty drives immigration and human trafficking. To ensure fair prices for their coffee, growers in a southern Mexican town formed a cooperative with a micro-loan from a Christian organization in the United States.
Impoverished and illiterate women and girls who leave Guatemala to seek work in the United States become easy prey for human traffickers. Educational opportunities offered in one town help decrease the need to migrate and thus help fight human trafficking.
Details of prosecuting human traffickers in the United States are examined. A victim of human trafficking and sex slavery describes the prosecution of her oppressors.
The Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) supports victims of human trafficking emotionally, financially, and legally. A victim describes what support from CAST meant to her.
Discovering human trafficking and slavery operations is much more difficult than prosecuting them. The assistance of an informed public is essential for helping officials discover such cases.